


Mentality

by Nara



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 06:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/923090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nara/pseuds/Nara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh-centric. Moving on is a process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mentality

He couldn’t remember not dying.

~

Raleigh Becket was still alive. He wasn’t sure if he remembered that. He was still connected to his brother when the Kaiju tore him from their Jaeger. He was in Yancy’s brain. He could feel the fear, the adrenaline. He could feel the pain…and then he could feel nothing.

But for a split second, before the nothing, Raleigh felt himself die. When Yancy died, Raleigh didn’t just lose a brother, he lost the other half of his brain. It was more than enough to break a man.

~

The first year after he crashed on the beach in Alaska was a blur. He couldn’t remember much about it. He never expected to wake up in the mornings. He spent the days doing nothing important, or maybe nothing at all. Numb was the least of it. It was silent in his brain.

They sent him to a therapist to talk about what happened. He had nothing to say. How can you explain to someone that you died when you didn’t? He couldn’t remember what the therapist told him.

He didn’t particularly care.

~

Two years after the incident, when he slowly began to get used to the fact that he didn’t actually die in that Jaeger - that’s when it began to hurt. He had enough distance to know that he watched his brother die, he felt his brother die, and if things had gone differently, he could have died too.

But he didn’t die. He knew that now.

He wished he had.

~

Three years later and he was still having nightmares. He woke up screaming every morning.

He worked construction. He hadn’t gone back to the Jaeger program, unwilling to even see if he was drift compatible with anyone else. He was afraid to let anyone else in. He didn’t want to risk it.

He hoped building this wall would stop the Kaiju, that they could stop them without the Jaegers so that no one else would die like he did, like Yancy did.

He knew it wouldn’t.

The military didn’t check up on him anymore. He hadn’t seen the therapist since that first year, but he could probably use one now. He was sure that now he would have a lot to say.

But he kept building. He took the dangerous jobs. He watched the news. He wasn’t living anymore, but he was existing.

For now, that was enough.

~

Year four and he was antsy. He still had nightmares, he still took the dangerous jobs on the rig, but he could look back and remember the good times with his brother, and the good things they had done together. This wasn’t the way to honor his memory.

But he was stuck and did not know how to get unstuck.

So he kept working and he let himself miss Yancy. He let himself breathe.

He was beginning to live again.

~

Five years later the Marshall came back for him.

Raleigh Becket was more than ready.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ficlet the night I saw Pacific Rim so...several weeks ago. It's not the fic I wanted to write at the time, but I think overall it is better than what I wanted to write. Because I think (I hope) in a weird way that this little ficlet mirrors the movie - as a story about hope and moving forward even when everything turns to shit around you.
> 
> Crossposted on tumblr: girl-in-the-library.tumblr.com


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